Contributed by Vlad Shvets from Paperform.co
Are you overstaffed or understaffed?
Are you wondering how many employees you need?Ecommerce doesn’t only mean delivering a box of stuff from a supplier to the end client. It’s a service that ensures the visitor the comfort of being one click away from a wide range of quality products that he can easily buy at any time, in complete safety. It is especially important to consider staffing when moving a physical store to an online store.
For an entrepreneur, one of the critical factors of enhancing an e-commerce business is receiving feedback from clients, because it needs to adapt his products to the market’s requirements and his competitors, and also adjust his business from a technical point of view, as the software solution he uses is extremely important too. This could be a good start for a road full of success while building a reputation and keeping clients satisfied. Quite a combo, right?!
Developing an e-commerce business and launching an online store implies a lot of hard work and decision making, so if you plan on doing it, then you have to be well informed and have a few unknown facts as possible from the very beginning. The less surprised you will be, the better.
Considerations for How Many Employees Your Ecommerce Business Needs
#1: As Many As It Should
If I had to enumerate a minimum number of team members here, I would say:
- -a marketing representative that usually is the owner of the business;
- -two sales assistants. OK, let’s stop a bit here. Why two? You might ask. Simply because it’s a critical department and if one salesperson is absent the second one covers for him;
- -a researcher that can also work from home;
- -a person who enters the products on the website;
- -a programmer or developer, whether internal or external;
- -an errand, if you choose to make deliveries in your town.
On the whole, I would say a team of 2-3 people minimum as permanent employees and 2-3 external collaborators would do the work.
#2: Depending on the information flow,
… there are several positions to fill, like:
- -accounting, tax, finance;
- -the sales flow, to do business, so make money;
- -the marketing flow to be able to sell what is on your website;
- -adding content on the website, products (stocks and prices), and descriptive texts;
- -changing features on the website, adding new functions, new menus, changing layouts, etc;
What is the current flow of information in your business? How do you make sure that no information, related to business finances of customers, falls through the cracks? Draw a visual of you business structure, and be sure that every task is assigned to a person. In small businesses, employees have to wear more than one hat.
#3: Hire or outsource?
As a small business, it might be more cost-effective to outsource your services to a part-time free-lancer than hire someone full-time. When your sales volume is low, you can have a part-time sales person answering your calls and processing your orders, especially if your website and online forms are figured out and the information is at hand. If you also add billing and delivery options with only two clicks, then things will arise with great ease.
As for the content, you should have someone committed to it, either internal or external to your company, for product descriptions, characteristics, photos, reviews, and so on. For all that’s SEO and CPC, you can externalize for a start, the same for programming – one or two freelancers paid hourly will do the trick.
Another important aspect is keeping in mind that implementing a 24/7 chat requires more resources than the 8/24 model. You should also decide if your call center answers inbound calls or if your client is called in 24 hours after leaving a message.
Plan, plan, and plan some more
Ideally, creating a strategy that can cover everything about your e-commerce business for the next 3 to 5 years would bring you closer to success. This way, you can easily prioritize actions and, depending on your financial and human resources, you can keep an eye on the big picture too and move forward in several directions at the same time.
While tasks like accounting, product management, etc. are compulsory and must be constantly accomplished, you can juggle between other tasks to reduce the work volume and the number of employees. For instance, choose between in house marketing strategies versus externalization, decide upon the frequency of social media activities, the number of social media networks, off-site SEO, software that can be used to automate some processes, weekly newsletter, reports, and weekly or monthly result evaluations, etc.).
If you automate routine tasks like syncing payment information to your store, email marketing & advertising, you can get more tasks accomplished with fewer employees.
To Sum It All Up
Starting an e-commerce business is not an easy job, because if it were, wouldn’t we all have our own online store? Unfortunately, many e-commerce owners go into business without recognizing the fundamentals of running a successful business. Without proper planning, a decent investment, extensive knowledge, and respect for your clients, you will not be able to compete against other business owners in the marketplace.
Be realistic when it comes to deciding the number of employees that your e-commerce business needs. Do your planning first, map out your company, and then make sure to grow gradually without overlooking any aspect of what developing a business implies.
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This post was written by Vlad Shvets from Paperform.
Is Connex the Right Tool For You To Expand Your Business to Multichannel Ecommerce?
Most of our customers sell on multiple e-commerce channels. For example, Woocommerce, Shopify, Magento, and ShipStation, just to name a few.
They want to grow their business, and they also value the peace of mind from knowing their books are always up to date and they can serve their customers.
Why Our Customers Choose Sync with Connex
- Developed specifically e-commerce business owners
- You can scale your business by automatically syncing sales & inventory from multiple e-commerce platforms to QuickBooks Desktop or Online.
- You don’t have to spend your resources manually entering sales, inventory, and customers into your website and QuickBooks accounts.
Recommended by Intuit itself, Connex for QuickBooks will give you peace of mind that your inventory will be updated. You will be free of the frustration of oversells and missed items.
- When your inventory is up-to-date, you can achieve higher customer satisfaction, leading to more positive reviews, and increased sales.
- For phone orders, we can sync sales from QuickBooks to your shipping solution.
- If you sell on multiple channels, you can simplify by using our solution instead of multiple tools.
- Connex integrates QuickBooks with all major e-commerce platforms, such as Woocommerce, Shopify, Magento, Amazon, and e-commerce shipping solutions such as Shipworks, Ordoro, ShipStation and ShippingEasy.
–Click here for a full list of our ecommerce, shipping, and payment integrations
How can you decide whether Connex is right for your business?
The easiest way to tell whether Connex is right for your business is to speak with our sales team
During this introductory call, you will discover how Connex can help you to:
- Eliminate manual data entry into QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop
- Automatically update your inventory and prevent oversells and refunds
- Manage sales from multiple channels in one app
- Connect your shipping solutions to QuickBooks
- Have accurate financial information in your QuickBooks every day
Are you unsure whether Connex is right for your business?
Click here to schedule an introductory 15 minute call with a member of our sales team.